Out Of Misery
by Fifth Horseman
Summary: This is the rewrite of Ending The Pain. I know, I started yapping about doing it a long time ago but it's finally here. Hopefully its better than the original. It certainly can't be worse.


**Disclaimer:** I don't own Neon Genesis Evangelion or anything associated with it. Gainax created this world, I just play in it.

Well, it certainly did take me long enough to get this done, considering I first mentioned about doing it well over a year ago. Well, life's just a bitch that way.

This is the long promised rewrite of _Ending The Pain_. It was the third fan fic I ever wrote and quite frankly...it sucked. At the time I was high on the good reviews and praise I got for _Letters_ and _Under The Gun_, and I wrote it in about three hours. And it shows.

The farther away from posting it I got, the less I liked it and considering what a hard ass I've become about how and what I write, I knew I couldn't leave it as it was.

What this is, is more of a mass edit rewrite than a delete and redo. While it is still not what it probably could be, it can't be worse than the original.

While I have not been totally inactive as a writer since my last project (I have been lending a hand to another writer), this will be the first thing of my own I have put out since July of 2009, though it has not been for a lack of trying.

With that said I hope you get some enjoyment from this rebuild and I hope that you will leave a review.

As usual, any flamers who dare show their shrunken little heads will be treated with the malice and disdain they deserve.

Oh, and I don't want to hear any complaints about Shinji being OC. Consider what he's just been through, you'd either get tough or die too. And yes it deviates from canon and is a bit AU. Anything but the original canon is AU. Any bitching about either one comes up and I come to your house and take your soul. The Horseman is hungry.

And away we go...

* * *

**Out Of Misery**

The war was finally over and Third Impact had been averted, although the cost had been horrendous. A great many lives had been lost and the once impressive fortress city of Tokyo 3 was a shattered wreck, a pale shadow of its former self. Dead soldiers, mangled aircraft, overturned and burning vehicles, all of this littered the torn and ravaged landscape. The city itself was blasted and flattened, piles of broken concrete and twisted steel looking unrecognizable as anything that had ever been habitable at one time.

NERV itself was in ruins. The geo-front was blown open to the sky above, its once beautiful park-like grounds ripped and torn apart, destroyed by the combat of biomechanical giants. The great pyramid was heavily damaged from numerous missile and artillery hits, its hallways and other parts of the base further underground were pockmarked with bullet strikes and painted with blood. Littered with the senseless, savage butchery of the SEELE sponsored commando raid.

The crimson giant that was Unit 02 lay on its back in the geo-front with a fake lance piercing its head, pinning it to the ground. The terrifying figure of Shogoki stood nearby like a silent sentinel, the broken remains of a false lance impaling its left knee joint and the true Lance of Longinus gripped in its massive purple hands as it kept a silent watch over the defiled land.

Littering the ground around it was the shattered white armour and shredded, bloody remains of the nine mass production Evangelions that it had torn to pieces in its awesome berserker fury. Those hideous abominations, just like their masters at SEELE, would never rise again to plague mankind.

The old men themselves had been found in the secret bunker they had kept in Tokyo-3 as their front row seat to Instrumentality. The place where they had convened to witness their long awaited crowning achievement of the dissolution of mankind into one great entity that would know no pain or suffering. Nor would it know individuality or any sense of awareness.

They had lived just long enough to see a fragile, terrified, fourteen year old boy find himself and defy their will and that of his cruel father. At the moment they realized that all of their years of meticulous planning, scheming, and manipulations had all been for naught, as they began to cry out in indignant rage, they began to choke, wheeze, and convulse. They coughed blood and began to slowly drown on the fluid that was filling their lungs.

The nerve gas that had been pumped into the bunker's ventilation system had been diluted somewhat by the hands of skilled and unscrupulous chemists so that its effects would take a little bit longer than normal to kill its victims. It took a long time for the old men of SEELE to die, a time during which their suffering painfully reminded them that their utopian dreams had failed. The words of farewell transmitted through their communication system told them exactly who had just put an end to them, and it would be the last thing they would ever hear or know.

* * *

Four weeks had passed since the day of the final battle. Four horrible, pain filled weeks. It was early in the morning as Asuka Langley Sohryu, clad in the same yellow sundress she wore when she first met Shinji on the carrier _Over The Rainbow_, sat on a rickety wooden chair among the ruins of her best friend's house, Hikari herself being safe and sound in Tokyo 2.

Outside the wrecked home she could hear the persistent rumble and clatter of construction machinery as it dug through the rubble of the city. What had begun hopefully as a rescue effort was now an operation to recover the dead bodies of the very few people who had still been within the city at the time of the JSSDF's invasion. For its part the sun shone down mockingly upon the miserable land beneath it, its warming rays lancing through the ruins to illuminate her as if she were under a spotlight.

She removed the patch covering her left eye to reveal the now pale and cloudy iris dotting her blood filled eyeball. The bright sunlight did nothing to lessen the pain in her head but she left the protective covering off anyway. The constant, stabbing pain was threatening to drive her crazy no matter what she did. Or at least crazier than she already was. He was right. She was crazy and she was useless.

The massive ego that she had constructed after her mother's suicide to cover her pain and hide her damaged heart from the world had done more damage to her than it had done her good, the protection she sought from it nothing but a lie. She was lonely, so lonely that words couldn't begin to describe the crippling feeling that ate away at her insides and left her feeling cold. She had driven away everyone who had ever dared to try and care about her and warm the block of ice her heart had become.

No one was good enough to be near her. No one was smarter than she was. No one was more skilled than she was. She was so far above and beyond everyone else that they could never hope to reach her, even if they had two lifetimes in which to do it. They were all nothing compared to her.

She was supposed to be the best, but she had been bested time and again by someone who seemed to owe more to destiny than to skill. Bested by a boring little boy who apologized for every single thing that happened around him, as if he were apologizing for his very existence itself.

Now, too late, she realised that that was pretty much exactly what he had been doing and she had done more than her share to make him feel that way.

She discovered far too late that she had some pretty strong feelings for Shinji. She had treated him so badly, hurt him so many times. And for what? Because he tried to be kind to her? Because he wanted to be her friend? Because he looked after her by cooking her meals and doing her laundry and keeping the apartment clean?

Even after that last battle, after he had saved her life when the MP Evas she had defeated started moving again, she had treated him like a piece of garbage. She repaid him by screaming insults and accusations at him and by hitting him.

She had told him that she hated him.

Tears streamed from her eyes, tears that she had refused to let out for her entire life. She wished she could undo everything she had said or done to him, tell him that she didn't hate him, tell him that the exact opposite was true. Tell him that she loved him and that she just wanted him to hold her and not let go. But it was way too late for that now. She could never make it up to her 'baka Shinji', she couldn't take away the pain she had given him.

She was tired. Tired of Angels and Evas, SEELE and NERV, tired of herself and the mess she had made of her life. She picked up a shard of a broken mirror and looked at herself. Her face was drawn and she looked haggard. Her once lustrous hair hung limply about her shoulders and her damaged eye mocked everything that she had thought that she was. Soon, that would all disappear.

"I'm sorry Shinji," she cried. "Please forgive me."

* * *

Four weeks had passed since the day of the final battle. Four gruelling, pain filled weeks. A now once again brown haired Ritsuko Akagi stood on the bullet scarred command bridge in Central Dogma, her left shoulder throbbing painfully as she adjusted the sling supporting her arm. A bullet meant to pierce her heart had gone through her shoulder instead, an ironic twist that she could only laugh at. The bullet couldn't pierce what wasn't there. He was right. She had no heart.

She had given it away to a lover who didn't care a damn thing about her, and he had discarded it like everything else he had no use for. The things she had done for his scenario had proven that she had no heart and little in the way of a conscience. She had done so many terrible things for him, not because she believed in his scenario, but because she had sold her soul to its master. He owned her, body and soul.

She had a weakness for intelligence and power and he had both. She was also a very lonely woman and the attention he showed her after her mother's death had ensnared her in his web. She had desired love but had ended up settling for the illusion of love. An illusion he was all too glad to provide her with as he used her body for his pleasure, often roughly, and used her mind for his selfish, obsessive purpose. She had abused others on his behalf and had driven away her only true friend, the only person she could have and should have confided in. Stupidly, she let her own self importance and selfish need keep his secrets.

She stood on the edge of the railing, looking down at the mesmerizing sight of the cold concrete floor some thirty feet below. Is this how her mother had felt before she let go? She hadn't gotten along well with her mother but she felt herself to be closer to her and understanding her more now than she ever had before. She had ended up being just like her in the end, and Gendo had thrown her away too when he no longer had a use for her.

Now, she no longer even had a use for herself and there was no reason to even try to hold on anymore.

Four weeks had passed since the day of the final battle. Four gruelling, pain filled weeks. Misato

Katsuragi staggered down a dusty, dimly lit corridor deep within Central Dogma. She shouldn't be here. She shouldn't be on her feet. Hell, she shouldn't even be out of the hospital. The burning pain in the right side of her chest and her laboured breathing told her that was a certainty, but she was here anyway. She had to be here. This was where Kaji's body was.

She knew it wouldn't be a pleasant sight, but she couldn't stay away. He was right. She was responsible for her lover's death just as surely as if she had pulled the trigger herself. She had used him just as she had used the Children, all for her own unquenchable need for revenge.

She had pushed to know the truth, knowing that if she gave him her body Kaji would find what she wanted. Then again, Kaji would have taken her body regardless of the motivation. She had given it to him long ago to dirty herself, to destroy the good girl she became tired of trying to be as a child. He had taken it willingly and with no regrets, doing everything to it that she wanted him to and then some.

But her body and Kaji hadn't been the only ones she had sacrificed on her personal altar. Rei. Asuka. Shinji. Her much loved little Shinji-kun. She had used them all, and him especially, to get her revenge upon Adam for the destruction of Second Impact. The destruction of her father. The destruction of her innocence. Second Impact had broken her and everything that came after was so she could gain her badly needed vengeance.

She sent children into battle while she stood in the almost certain safety of Central Dogma, issuing them their orders. She saw them come back damaged and broken yet she sent them out again and again. She was a fraud. She desired revenge but didn't dirty her own hands to obtain it. She was a drunk and a whore and she was sick to death of herself.

She came across his body almost without warning. He lay on the stained concrete in front of a large ventilation fan. It had served to suck the moisture out of the air in the place where he lay, effectively causing a form of mummification. His skin was dark, dried and wrinkled, looking like old leather. They had shot him and just left him there, knowing that he would not be found for a long time, if ever.

Crying, she slid down the wall until she was seated on the cold floor. God, she had made such a mess of her life and she was so ashamed of herself. Why couldn't she have acted out of strength instead of reacting out of pain and a thirst for revenge? Why did he have to play such a foolish game with the people behind all of this?

Why couldn't he have just one time told her that he loved her?

She was totally spent. There was nothing left of the fire that had burned inside of her for so long. The need and desire to kill the Angels that had fuelled that fire was gone now and she was little more than a barely functioning, burned out husk that couldn't even stand to look at itself in the mirror.

Fumbling inside her jacket with her left hand, she finally was able to draw her pistol and flicked off the safety.

She hoped her Shinji-kun would forgive her for this, her final act of selfish stupidity.

* * *

Nearly five weeks had passed since the final battle, and the last week had been especially brutal for Shinji Ikari. The burgeoning sense of self worth and well being he had begun to develop after coming into his own and fighting off SEELE's Evas was gone now and had been replaced by a cold emptiness that was worse than anything he had ever known in his young life.

He stood in the cemetery, looking upon the graves of four people who had become closer to him than most ever had. He had shed all of his tears for these people the night before, endeavouring to stand strong here today as they were laid to rest. He felt that he owed them that much at the very least.

Despite the throbbing pain in his torn up left knee, a effect of ultra high synchronization and a fake Lance of Longinus spearing his Eva's knee, he had chosen to stand throughout the funerals to show his respect, using his crutches as little as possible. For once in his life, despite whatever pain he was feeling be it mental or physical, he was determined to stand up on his own two feet and be counted no matter how small and insignificant the gesture may be.

They had found Asuka sitting peacefully in a chair in the middle of Hikari's ruined house as if asleep, her wrists slit open and the floor slick with her blood. He had loved Asuka. Even when she called him stupid, or a pervert, or insulted him for everything he ever did, right or wrong, he still loved her. He knew it was messed up, but he couldn't help how he felt.

During the final battle she had bitched constantly that he wasn't there to help her. When he did show up and finished off the reviving MP Evas, she screamed and yelled at him again for taking so long and accused him of doing it just so he could show her up and be Invincible Shinji again. Before he could say a word she had punched him in the mouth and screamed that she hated him. Spitting out blood, he had stood up on his good leg, looked her in the eye and sadly shook his head before hobbling away. Despite everything she had ever said and done to him, no matter how much it hurt to do so, he still loved her even if she hated him.

They had found Ritsuko lying dead in a crumpled heap on the floor at the bottom of the command centre, her body as broken as her spirit. He hadn't totally forgiven her for what she did to Rei's clones, but he knew that his father had driven her to that madness. She hadn't treated him badly and he did think she was essentially a good person, he really wanted to believe that, but like all of them she was another victim of his father.

He could identify with her to a degree. She was lonely and had just wanted someone to love her, but she had made a poor choice in that regard and it was a choice she couldn't un-make. He truly wished that he could have gotten to know the better side of Ritsuko Akagi, the softer and fun side he had heard about from Misato. He felt sorry for her, for everything that she must have gone through because of his father and the toll that it had taken on her.

In the very short time he had known Kaji, the unshaven spy had almost been more of a father figure to him than Gendo ever had. In the few times he had interacted with him, Kaji had always seemed to know what to say to get him thinking in the right direction.

If you took away the womanizing attitude, Shinji would have liked to have been as self assured and carefree as Kaji was. He seemed to be able to stand calmly in the middle of a storm and see things for what they were and he wasn't afraid to be in the middle of it. He had the conviction to stand up for what he believed in and to go and do something about it, regardless of the danger it put him in.

He realized now that he had learned a lot more from Kaji than he had thought, he had just been too blind and absorbed in his own problems to really see it until now, when of course it was too late to thank him in person.

Misato. God how he loved that purple haired, scantily clad, mischievous, beer guzzling woman. By the time he had really begun to realize just how much he had come to care for her, her pain had devoured her, leaving her feeling that she had no choice in the end but to eat her gun. He had been drowning in his own pain and self pity for so long that he didn't see her pain until it was too late.

The last straw for him was when he had covered his head like a coward so he could drown out the sound of her tears when Kaji died. The incident with Kaworu had nearly destroyed him and caused him to cut himself off from her completely. It wasn't until the attack on NERV that he began to come out of it.

On the day of the battle, he had found himself. Something had clicked, or maybe it snapped, in his desperate, wounded mind. It was one of those moments where you either give up totally or find a reason to continue on.

Misato had found him cowering under a stairwell, placidly waiting for a JSSDF commando to release him from his personal hell with a bullet to the head. She charged in, gun blazing, risking her life for his worthless one and took out the soldiers with no regard at all for her own safety.

When he heard the spite in her words as she killed the last man, he felt that something click or snap in his mind. He had been looking for someone to care about him for all of his life and he she had been right in front of him ever since he came to Tokyo 3. When he saw the worry in her eyes when she looked to see if he was alright, and then the relief there when he told her he was, it confirmed what he thought. She really did care about him.

She succeeded in getting him to an elevator that would take him to his Eva, but not before one of SEELE's murdering bastards had put a bullet in her chest. She had wanted him to leave her there but he couldn't do it. He wouldn't do it. His sudden realization of how much she really meant to him put him in the frame of mind that he would rather die there with her than leave her to bleed to death on the cold, dirty concrete all alone.

She had grabbed him and kissed him, making a ridiculous promise and trying to shock him into action, but he didn't fall for it. He knew why she did it, but he also knew that she had put all of the love and caring she could into that kiss, making sure that he would never forget it no matter what happened in the next few hours. She made sure that he knew that someone cared about him and that someone believed in him.

He had pulled her into the elevator with him, doing what he could for her wound with the first aid kit he found there, and cursing himself for his pitiful knowledge of such things. He held her tightly, wishing that they were anywhere but here, wishing he was older and stronger so that he could have been there for her in ways that a scared to death, withdrawn, fourteen year old boy never could be. Maybe then he could have helped ease her pain, really done something for her to repay the kindness she had shown him.

When he arrived at the Eva cages he found someone to look after her while he went out and fought. He didn't fight for the salvation of the world, or for himself. He fought for her and for the faith she had put in him. She was all he had and he wasn't going to let her down. He was still scared to death, terrified, but he was also committed to making sure that even if he didn't survive the battle, no one would be able to say that he was a coward and that he hadn't tried his best in the end.

And then there was Rei. No one had seen her since the day of the battle, no one knew if she was alive or dead. Knowing his father, she was probably dead as well and he missed her too just like he missed the others. He had spent a lot of time thinking about her ever since he found out just what she was. He was ashamed of the way he had turned away from her at first, but he soon put it into perspective. She was a victim of his father just like the rest of them. She was made to be his tool and he knew all too well how his father treated his tools once their usefulness to him was at an end.

It was safe to say that he loved Rei just like he loved Asuka and Misato. He had always thought that she was very cute and unlike everyone else he hadn't been put off by her demeanour. He had never really even thought all that much about the blue hair and red eyes. It had just seemed right for her somehow and it made her truly unique.

While he knew the chances were very slim, he hoped that she had somehow managed to get away, that the carnage and its aftermath hadn't claimed her as well. Maybe it was selfish of him, but he wanted to see her again. He wanted to apologise for his reaction to the truth of what she was.

He stayed until the graves had been filled in and he was left alone so he that he could say a private goodbye to each of them. After paying his respects he hobbled out of the cemetery and to the car that was waiting to take him home.

As the burial grounds disappeared behind him, he let his anger resume its place at the front of his mind. Removing a compact disc from the inside pocket of his black suit, he regarded it thoughtfully, considering its contents and what he planned to do with them.

In the five weeks since the last battle he had changed, his personality doing almost a complete one hundred and eighty degree turn. He no longer felt like he wanted to run and hide from things, he knew that it was a useless venture now. He was committed to trying to confront his issues head on and there was a very large issue on his mind right now.

He knew what it was that had pushed Asuka, Ritsuko, and Misato to take their own lives. He knew who was responsible for removing these people from his life. He didn't blame them for ending it. He knew now that he wasn't the only person who had suffered and who had been in pain, they had all been in the same position and they had reached the limits of what they could endure.

He didn't know how he had managed not to take his own life at some point in the past. Maybe it was because he had always felt that he deserved to suffer for being such a terrible person and that ending his life would cheat the rest of the world of their pound of flesh. God, he had been such an idiot.

Now, he was determined that he would make his apology to the world, to the people he had lost, by confronting the one that had given them the push into Death's cold embrace. By doing so he would in effect also be apologizing to himself.

It was time to confront the biggest issue in his life, head on.

* * *

Gendo Ikari sat comfortably in the leather high back behind the oversized desk in his cavernous office. Illuminated by the approaching twilight filtering through the windows, he looked everything like the powerful and influential man that he was. He had the air of a reigning king.

With a glass of rare scotch within easy reach, the bottle being a little regarded gift from someone who's support he had manipulated long ago, he celebrated his victory. It wasn't the victory that he had intended or the one he had worked so long and hard for, but it was a victory none the less and he felt like indulging himself. He was adaptable and he had contingencies. In the end he would still get what he wanted. He had planned for every eventuality, including this one, so he could afford to wait a little longer to get what he wanted. Time was always on his side.

His plans to be reunited with Yui had indeed been delayed, but along with being adaptable, he was also vindictive and he had quickly planned and executed his revenge. A taste of which had taken place even before things went sideways as part of his existing plans. He had been responsible for the nerve gas attack that had put an end to SEELE, an act that he felt absolutely no remorse over what so ever.

He had planned it well before the day of the final battle, his own intelligence network discovering where the old men would be at the pivotal moment. He had even made sure to have access to a recording of their final moments just in case he should actually still be alive to see it, and he had enjoyed every moment of their slow, agonizing deaths. It almost made the disruption to his scenario worth it.

He had wanted them to live long enough to know that he had trumped them. He wanted them to know that they would be dead before their souls could be Complimented and that they would not be a part of the greater whole they had envisioned. Like usual, Gendo Ikari got what he wanted.

With his plans disrupted for the moment and with the old men dead, he enacted another of his many contingencies. This plan put the blame for everything at their feet and made him look like an unknowing cog in the machine that they had kept in the dark and used to further their sinister agenda. After all, he was just a man trying to do his duty to protect the human race that had already suffered so much.

He was well distanced from anything that could link him to their plans for Instrumentality and any of the manipulations that went along with it. When the heat currently surrounding him subsided and the UN went back to gazing at its collective navel, he would put his new plans for Instrumentality into action and finally be reunited with Yui.

His revenge against those who had thwarted him actually started with Rei while the attack against NERV was still in progress. His little doll had decided to defy him and had used her AT field to rip out and crush the embryonic form of Adam that was grafted to his right hand. It took all the power she could pull from her own S2 organ to maintain her physical integrity and use her field to get rid of Adam. It exhausted her and it was all she could manage to flee and get away from Lilith before her body and mind was overwhelmed by the Second Angel's ambient power.

He found her in the Dummy Plug lab, too weak to defend herself. He wasted no time attacking her, ensuring she couldn't muster up enough energy to use her AT Field again, even if just to defend herself. He gave her a savage beating, exercising his frustrations against her body before throwing her limp, broken, and bleeding form into the empty memory transference chamber and locking her in, never to be thought of again. He had created the ungrateful little bitch and given her pitiful artificial life a purpose and her repayment to him was betrayal, in favour of his worthless son no less. She would not be doing that again.

Four days later he began to enact his plan against the rest of them. He planted the seeds of despair in their minds and time, along with their already existing fears, would see those dark seeds grow and flourish. There were all stretched to the absolute limits of their sanity as it was, and with a few well placed words he was able to give them all that final little push that sent every one of them right over the edge.

The first of them had been Pilot Sohryu. She was already fragile and easily convinced that she was crazy and worthless, of no consequence to anybody since she had alienated anyone who had ever given a damn about her. She had been nothing but cannon fodder, there to ensure that the critical elements of his plan, the First and Third Children, survived long enough to fulfil their assigned roles.

Ritsuko had been just as easy, he had already broken her long ago and it took pitifully little for him to convince her that she had no worth left to anyone. Hadn't he already proven that to her by shooting her?

She was socially inept, only able to attract a man who was willing to use her and she was content to be used so long as she could believe the lie that someone actually loved her. He told her that while she may be a brilliant scientist, she was a total failure as a woman. She was heartless and empty, willing to do the most heinous things just for a little bit of attention from him.

Katsuragi had been a harder nut to crack, but she had been ripe for the taking as well. She had a multitude of problems that he could use against her, but the two freshest open wounds for her were Kaji and the Children. Shinji especially.

He convinced her that it was her incessant need to discover the truth of NERV that had resulted in his death. Once he had driven that into her, he used her slovenly behaviour and her use of others to seek her revenge, especially her use of the Children, to batter her down. She had reached the end of her endurance and it had been relatively easy to push her over the edge from there.

The last one was Shinji and the deaths of the others was his punishment. He told Shinji that he was responsible for all of it, that their blood was on his hands. By finally finding a spine he had served to leave mankind to suffer and the people he cared about to suffer the most. By defeating the MP Evas and not allowing them to take him, he had left them all to be devoured by their demons. He was always a failure, was meant to be nothing but a failure, and he couldn't even do that right. He had caused their deaths as surely as if he had killed them with his own hands.

He knew how his son felt about them all, including Rei. Now, with Asuka, Ritsuko, Kaji and Misato freshly buried and Rei nowhere to be found, he knew that his son would begin to suffer in earnest. Even if he didn't take his own life he would carry the guilt for the remainder of it. It would eat him alive from the inside out like a cancer and he would enjoy watching it happen. Revenge was indeed a dish best served cold and it didn't get any colder than when it was directed at your own flesh and blood.

Needless to say then, it came as quite a surprise to him when Shinji hobbled into his office that evening uninvited and not looking at all like someone who was being eaten alive by guilt.

"Surprised to see me Gendo Rokubungi?" Shinji asked, his voice full of loathing for the intimidating man before him.

He gave the boy his usual glare. "I am your father and your commanding officer," Gendo said firmly, trying to exercise his authority. "You will address me as such."

Shinji did something Gendo didn't expect. He laughed. It was bitter and hate filled and just a little chilling. "You have never been a father to me and I won't acknowledge you as one now or ever again. As for being my commanding officer, if you haven't noticed there's nothing left for you to command."

Gendo was a bit surprised when he received a glare back that was at least as fearsome as his own. No, it was worse actually. There was something in his eyes that he had ever only seen in the eyes of Unit 01.

"And Ikari was my mothers name," Shinji continued coldly, cutting off his line of thought. "You don't deserve to wear it you bastard!"

"Such a disrespectful child," Gendo said, his outward demeanour one of disinterested dismissiveness. On the inside however, his son's attitude had his interest piqued. "So why have you so rudely invited yourself into my office Third Child?"

Shinji pulled the disk out of his pocket and threw it on the desk. "That disk contains the sound records of your motivational talks with Asuka, Ritsuko and Misato," he spat hatefully. "You never knew that Dr. Ikagi had bugged and disabled the encryption on your cell phone before you threw her in the brig did you? Every word you've said since then that was within twenty feet of your phone was captured and recorded by the MAGI."

Gendo kept a neutral expression on his face despite his great displeasure at this news. This was not good. "How did you acquire it?"

"I'm not stupid," Shinji answered. "And neither was she. I do know a thing or two about computers. She left something behind before she killed herself that told me that this existed so I tried looking for it. It took me a while but I found it."

He hoped he was being a convincing liar, something he had never been very good at. For her protection, he didn't tell Gendo that it was a distraught Maya Ibuki who had told him that the information existed in the first place and had helped him retrieve it. He had spent a great deal of time around the cute bridge tech over the last couple of weeks, being her near constant companion since the suicides. She had been the one that had found Ritsuko's body and he had been afraid she would take her own life as well.

He had never known much about Maya, so he had never known anything about just how much she looked up to Ritsuko and how much she idolized her. It had been very hard for her to find out what her beloved Sempai had been involved with. They had been able to share their grief with each other and it had helped them immensely. It surprised him how easily he had been able to open up to her. They talked about a lot of things and they were well on their way to becoming very good friends and it was something they both needed desperately right now if they to be able to hang on and survive this mess.

When he expressed a desire to get back at his father for what he had done, she had initially tried to make him reconsider. Gendo was a frightening entity to everyone who had worked under his command, and the fact that he had pretty much been able to talk her Sempai and the others into committing suicide terrified her. She knew what he had told Shinji as well and she was afraid for him, but she couldn't dissuade him from attempting the confrontation.

He knew that with the state she was in, if anything happened to him here today her name would very likely be added to the list of those who had taken their own lives. It seemed like he was really all she had to hang onto. He doubted very seriously that she could go on by herself now, and he hated to make her worry so much but he had to do this. He had to confront his father and stand up to him for once in his life.

He knew the man was certainly capable of doing a lot of unsavoury things. Abandoning his own son as part of a plot to break and use him only being a small part of the things Gendo had done, but even so, Shinji still could not believe that his own father could twist other people's pain like that. Twist it until they felt the only option they had left was to take their own lives.

And to top the whole thing off, this man that biology stated was his father, was using their deaths to make him suffer, to exact revenge against him for spoiling his precious scenario. It was such a heinous thing that he had trouble wrapping his mind around it.

"So what do you intend to do with this information?" Gendo asked him, giving him no indication if he believed his story or not. To Gendo it didn't really matter how he got it, so long as the information didn't get out.

"I'm not going to do anything with it," Shinji answered as he put his right hand into the outside pocket of his suit jacket and pulled out a gun. It was Misato's back up that she had kept hidden in her closet. "Instead I'm going to kill the king of all bastards while he sits high on his throne."

He fired, missing a little high and to the right, the bullet thwacking into the wall well behind Gendo. He had little experience with firearms, but for what he had in mind it was just as well because firing wide had been what he planned to do all along.

Even with as much hatred as he felt towards his father, he knew he couldn't kill him. Partly because he was his father, as unfortunate a truth as that was, but also because he couldn't knowingly take another persons life. He wanted to scare his father, give him a little taste of the fear he had been living with. He planned on firing a few shots around the room, maybe a couple into the desk while taunting him. _'Oh look, I missed. Let me try again.'_ He wanted to see just one look of fear cross the bastards face. He wanted to see him on the receiving end for once and know what it felt like to fear for his life.

It also served another purpose. It would keep his father busy while Maya took the real disk, the one he threw on the desk was blank, and send the information on it to every law enforcement agency and media outlet she could get it to. Right now she was in Ritsuko's old office doing just that. On the disk was not just the audio that had been picked up through his phone, but there were also several other files that would implicate Gendo as being the active and knowing participant in Instrumentality that he was right from the start.

That information had been stored on the same secret, private server kept separate from the MAGI where Ritsuko had stored the audio from the phone. Telling Gendo it had been stored on the MAGI itself was another falsehood.

Just hours before she killed herself, Ritsuko had talked to Maya one last time to try and apologize for not being the person Maya had thought she was. She seemed to honestly regret the pain she had caused the younger woman when that truth came out.

She told her protégé about the files and how to access them. She also told her of the one truly secure computer line out from NERV that could not be traced by Gendo, or interfered with by the vindictive spirit of her mother that seemed to have arisen from the organic brains of the supercomputer that had been infused with the aspects of her personality. She gave her the password and told her that if it looked like Gendo was going to pull the wool over the eyes of the UN investigators and get away clean, that she should take the contents of the files and spread them far and wide to anyone who could receive it.

However, Murphy's Law, which states that anything that can go wrong, will, suddenly came into effect on Shinji's part of the plan. Not being a trained military or intelligence operative, he wasn't familiar with the saying '_no plan ever survives contact with the enemy'_. He hadn't counted on Gendo having a gun hidden under his desk, or that he could get to it so quickly. He also hadn't counted on Gendo being able to calmly shoot his own son with no hesitation, regret, or remorse. He hadn't counted on Gendo not being the least bit afraid or intimidated.

Before he could fire another near miss, Gendo drew his gun and shot him in the stomach. He went down hard, his crutches and gun falling away to clatter loudly against the polished floor. He cried out loudly and clutched his wound with both hands, groaning in pain as bright red blood seeped between his fingers.

"Long live the king," Gendo emotionlessly told his son as he set the gun down and threw back the remainder of his scotch. However, his face froze in dread and disbelief when he heard a soft female voice, one he had counted on never hearing again, speak into his right ear.

"The king is dead."

A pair of slender white hands locked around his throat and began to squeeze. Gendo found himself staring into the crimson orbs of an enraged Rei Ayanami. Anger borne of everything he had ever done to her, of everything he had done to all of the people around him, but most of all, the hottest part of that anger was because he had hurt Shinji. Mostly for what he had just done, but also for the way he had treated the gentle boy who just wanted to be her friend, for his entire life.

She leaned into him, pushing his chair up against the desk to keep him from rolling away from her and so that she could use what little weight she had as leverage to strangle the man who had created her. A man she had once revered but now felt nothing but contempt and raw hatred for.

Gendo clawed at her hands, his heavily bandaged right hand being no help to him at all. She looked tired and weak, evidence that her already strained S2 had been working hard to try and heal the horrible damage he knew he had inflicted on her. Her ever present school uniform hid most of the visible signs of that damage, the fading bruises and contusions to her face, arms, and legs the only evidence visible.

Even so, her grip was strong and she had the upper hand on him. He began kicking at her legs and flailing his hands at her face. He opened a cut on her right cheek and landed a solid hit to her ribs with his right knee, but her grip on his throat never slackened.

He wrapped his legs around her torso and squeezed as hard as he could, trying to break her ribs or squeeze the air out of her before she could do it to him. He landed another blow that split open her upper lip and he felt a couple of her ribs snap, but it didn't help him nearly enough. Her grip didn't weaken, she didn't flinch or cry out in pain. The only sign of exertion was a bead of sweat that rolled down the side of her face. The look in her eyes never changed and those red orbs bored into him with rage filled intensity that burned right into his very soul.

Blackness was entering the edge of his vision as he clawed frantically for his gun with his left hand. He was dimly aware of the sound of both the fine cut crystal glass and the bottle of scotch being knocked to the floor and smashing as he frantically swept the top of his desk for the pistol. Finally he felt the texture of the grip against his fingers. He could feel his consciousness fading quickly as he managed to wedge the gun between them and fire. The only indication she gave that he had just shot her was a widening of her eyes.

"I will not die before you do," she told him in her eerily quiet voice. With a final hard push she turned the chair away from the desk and knocked them over backwards. All of her weight came down through her slender arms, the force of their landing crushing his windpipe and leaving him gagging and gasping futilely for breath

Rei fell off to her left, landing on her broken ribs, finally allowing herself to feel the searing pain and crying out because of it. When that pain became tolerable again and the blackness that threatened to overcome her vision receded, she picked the pistol up from where it had landed between them on the floor. With his frantic eyes staring at her in terror as he struggled to breath, she put two rounds through his head, putting him out of his misery and ensuring that the Bastard King would never rise again.

Letting the gun drop back to the floor, she now took the time to look at her wound. She knew the bullet had gone through her S2 organ and, judging by the dark colour of the blood, her liver too.

"Rei?" she heard Shinji's voice weakly call to her. She crawled around the desk, leaving a smear of blood behind her as she went to him. He lay there sweating and breathing heavily as he lay in a huge puddle of his own blood. His wound looked as bad as hers and she knew that neither of them would live much longer.

She took his hand in hers. Even though blood loss made his hand feel cold, it still warmed her to hold it. She revelled in the feel of it as she lay down beside him, her only friend. "I am here."

"Is he dead?" he asked shakily.

"Yes."

There was silence for a moment, save for the sound of their laboured breathing. "I'm sorry Rei," he said tearfully. "I'm sorry for everything. You were my friend and I ran from you. I was scared and I was stupid. I'm so sorry."

She favoured him with one of her rare but beautiful smiles that were reserved only for him. "I understand and I forgive you," she said as she looked into the eyes of the kind boy dying beside her. She could forgive him anything because he was the only person who had ever truly cared about her. "And I am still your friend…Shinji."

He squeezed her hand and she squeezed back. They closed their eyes and slowly faded into unconsciousness and beyond, hoping that their souls would be reunited with the others in a much happier place than this, somewhere on the other side.

* * *

AN: Hopefully you found this to be better than its predecessor. As stated at the start, please leave a review if you are so inclined.

And since you're hanging around, please check out my other stories. You know how to find them.


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